FLYING HIGH
Drones deliver drugs behind bars
‘‘If you wanted something . . . you can say to the guy that’s the contact with the drone people ‘right, well, I want this’ and they will give you a (delivery) time.’’ Former Wandsworth inmate S
Amazon has been beaten to it. According to the claims of a former con, a commercially viable drone-delivery parcel service is up and running – of all places, at England’s biggest jail.
A recent inmate of Wandsworth has made extraordinary claims about a sophisticated, profitable and very busy drone service flying contraband drugs and mobile phone SIM cards over prison walls.
The claims come at a time when chaos and corruption at the prison, in south-west London, have made headlines in the UK.
Most nights, the former prisoner said, he heard the buzz of drones flying in and out. Once he was startled by a drone crashing into his cell window.
He claimed that some prisoners – including one dubbed the Drone King – even made money leasing space on drone deliveries to other prisoners.
Though unverified, his claims are backed by similar recent reports from The Guardian and the BBC, which earlier this year obtained footage of a drone delivery at Wandsworth in south-west London.
The prison’s governor this month took the unusual step of allowing BBC TV cameras inside Wandsworth for a week, revealing brazen drug use in the prison corridors, frequent violence, and the despair of prison officers who said they had never seen it this bad.
The governor admitted tackling corruption was the first step to fighting other problems.
The UK Government made prison reform a top priority in this month’s Budget.
Recent Wandsworth inmate ‘S’, who did not want to be publicly identified for fear of repercussions, said Amazon – which in 2013 revealed it was working on a drone delivery service called Prime Air – ‘‘don’t need to do a pilot’’.
‘‘It’s been done at Wandsworth, it happens nightly,’’ ‘S’ said.
‘‘If you wanted something . . . you can say to the guy that’s the contact with the drone people ‘right, well, I want this’ and they will give you a (delivery) time.’’
The contraband, usually drugs, SIM cards or mobile phones, was sent to a team outside the jail who flew it to a specific cell, guided from the inside via mobile phone.
‘‘It’s ‘up a bit, left a bit’, then they pull it in with a broom handle,’’ said ‘S’. ‘‘On just my side of one wing [of the prison] I would say (it was) a couple of times a night.’’
Prisoners spent hours smashing their cells’ tough Perspex windows to enable a delivery.
Netting had been set up to prevent the old, low-tech version of the scam – contraband stuffed into tennis balls and chucked over the walls.
However, ‘S’ said the drones navigated through holes in the netting. Earlier this year one net blew down in a storm and was not replaced for some time.
‘‘It was open season – (drones) were stacking up like they were landing at Heathrow,’’ he said.
A week ago the BBC reported the number of times items thrown into prisons in England and Wales had more than doubled in the last two years, from 797 in 2013 to 2151 in 2015.
Last week BBC reporter Ed Thomas and his team were given exclusive access for a week’s filming inside Wandsworth.
They shot chaotic scenes of screaming prisoners confronting officers. Thomas remarked on the pervasive smell of cannabis on B-wing, and they filmed a group of prisoners smoking drugs in the open.
The BBC was told alcohol was brewed in cells, the synthetic legal high ‘Spice’ was smuggled in in large quantities, and corrupt prison officers were selling smartphones to prisoners at hundreds of pounds each.
One prisoner claimed he had ‘‘no alternative but to utilise violence for my safety . . . they’re so short-staffed in here this place can’t run, it’s unsafe.’’
A prison officer said: ‘‘I’m probably the most stressed I’ve been in 24 years.’’
‘S’ said accurate. the BBC report was
‘‘The place is out of control,’’ he said.
The drug economy was pervasive, ‘S’ said. The smell of cannabis was common, and ‘Spice’ was behind much of the violence, triggering psychotic episodes in prisoners. Drug debts were defaulted, leading to more assaults.
Brawls broke out as prison gangs, divided by nationality, fought over the control of contraband supplies and stills.
‘S’ said a ‘‘significant minority’’ of the staff were corrupt.
He claimed there was a big raid in December, in which every cell was searched as well as staff lockers and vehicles. This resulted in the seizure of more than 600 contraband phones, as well as ‘‘loads’’ of drugs and alcohol. Around 40 staff were suspended, he said. But within days, the situation was back to normal – apart from a new, higher price to buy phones from corrupt staff.
However a Ministry of Justice spokesman said there had been no such raid in December. He said a raid in November had found just 35 contraband phones, and no prison staff were suspended as a result.
‘S’ insisted there had been a cover-up of the raid.
He said demoralised and underpaid staff could make more than their weekly salary by smuggling in just one contraband phone.
A violent atmosphere was stoked by overcrowding and the lack of modern facilities, he said – for example, there were no official phones in cells and the few communal phones often did not work for days at a time.
Prisoners were stuck in their cells for all but a couple of hours a day, which led to mental health problems and self-harm.
Last week the UK government announced in its annual budget speech a program of prison reform which promised greater powers for governors.
‘‘We must do better at reducing violence and preventing drugs entering prison,’’ prisons minister Andrew Selous said in a statement.
Wandsworth is the biggest prison in the UK. It was built in 1849, a private prison (nationalised in 1877) for those serving short sentences. Past celebrity inmates include Oscar Wilde, Julian Assange, Rolf Harris and great train robber Ronnie Biggs.
An official report in 2015 said conditions at the prison were deteriorating ‘‘for reasons largely outside the prison’s control’’ – including a 25% budget cut.
It was ‘‘unacceptably overcrowded’’ with 1630 adult men, more than any other prison in the UK and much more than its official capacity of 963.